Newbie in need of sage advice w/ sour Belgian Ale

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sabianmonk

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Hey everybody,

I am new to homebrewtalk but I have read many a post here and they have helped me tremendously since I have started brewing in the last few months. Now I have run into my first real problem (on my fourth batch).

Here's the breakdown:

I have a 5 gallon batch of a Belgian wheat beer in which I added lemongrass. Unfortunately, I ran out dried lemongrass and added some fresh sprigs from my garden, not even considering how much more potent they would be fresh! Now my beer is very sour and I want to know if there is anyway I can salvage it.

The brew is currently in the secondary fermenter and I have added a little corriander and cumin to try and balance out the sourness but to no avail. I just added some more (I am now paranoid about overspicing my beer).

I do not currently know the pH of the beer but it is not so low as to prevent the yeast from propagating (a second krausen formed after I racked yesterday, so my White Labs 400 is alive and well).

Does anyone have any suggestions? Should I cut my losses and turn this into a marinade for my steaks?

The only options I have thought of is to brew a second batch of Belgian ale with no lemongrass and then to just mix the two together. My other idea is to try and add a base to neutralize the citric acid in the brew. Any thoughts on these ideas would be appreciated!
 
I doubt the sourness is from the lemongrass, most likely you've got some wild yeast and/or bacteria in there (did you sanitize the lemongrass from your garden before adding it?). I would pitch in some dregs (to ensure you've got "good" microbes) from a few sour beers and let it age for 9-12 months to let them do their work. Over that time the spices will fade and you'll get some other interesting flavors.

Hope that helps.
 
Is the beer developing a pelicle? If so, just leave it be and let it ferment for like 6 months. The pelicle will fall eventually and you can rack the beer into a keg/bottles. Who knows... maybe it'll be awesome! HA!
 
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